Holman Day

“ We wait for that melody up here in Maine,
—’Tis the song of the harrow and plow.
They are picking rocks in Oxford, and in Waldo
blasting ledge,
And they’re farming down in Lincoln on their
acres set on edge.
Down among the kitchen gardens of the slopes
of Cumberland
They’re sticking in the garden sass as thick as
it will stand.
And every nose is sniffing at the scent of fur-
rowed earth,
And every man is living all of life at what it’s
worth. ”

“ Let them that elect grub the dirt for a “gleam,”
Our ore is the gum and our lode is the seam
That doesn’t go sneaking in mire and clay,
But grins at the sun and drinks deep of broad day.
Go grope for your gold in the bowels of mud!
We’ll cleave our fresh nuggets of resinous blood
Forced out from the heart through the fibre and
vein
Of the giants who lurk in the woodlands of
Maine. ”

“ Till the heel of that old rocker’s gouged a holler
in the floor;
Set my boots behind the cook stove, dry my old
blue woolen socks,
Get my knife and plug tobacker from that dented
old tin box,
Set and smoke and look at mother clearing up
the things from tea;
—Rather tame for city fellers, but that’s fun
enough for me.
I am proud of mother’s parlor, but I’m feared
the thing has put
Curi’s notions her noddle, for she says I’m
underfoot;
Thinks we oughter light the parlor, get a crowd
and ontertain,
But I ain’t no city loafer,—I’m a farmer down in
Maine. ”

“ From them, the author of “Up in Maine” has drawn his inspiration. Rugged independence, singleness of purpose, unswerving integrity, philosophy adequate for all occasions, the great realities of life, and a cheerful disregard of conventionalities, are here found in all their native strength and vigor. These peculiarities as delineated may be rough, perhaps uncouth, but they are characteristic, picturesque, engaging, and lifelike. His subjects are rough diamonds. They have the inherent qualities from which great characters are developed, and out of which heroes are made. ”

“ And I’ll whisper, you know, just heart to heart,
’Twas “One Kind Kiss Before We Part,”
The mystic grip was a warm hand-press,
The sign and the test a swift caress,
And the dearest and sweetest of Used-to-be’s
Were the O. K. K. B. W. P’s.
AT THE OLD “GOOL” “Ten, ten and a double ten, forty-five and then
fifteen!”
Stand you here, old friend of mine, close your
eyes the while you lean
Your silvered hair against the wood that’s silvered
too, by sun and rain,
—The butt of storms as well as we,—old aliens
crawling back to Maine. ”

“ The chaps that pried with crowbar and the
chaps that pried with pen,
Are waitin’ to be measured for the things
they’ve done below
The angel with the girth-chain’s bound to give
us all fair show.
And the humble man who’s tussled with the
rocks of stubborn Maine
Won’t find that all his labor has been thankless
and in vain.
And while the wise and mighty get the glorious
credit due
The man who took the brunt of toil will be
remembered too.
The man who bent his aching back will earn
his crown, my child,
By the acres he made fertile and the miles of
rocks he piled. ”

“ There’s the song of the axe in the ringing wood,
And the sighing song of the distant sea.
Yet oft when the choruses are stilled
Some honest woodsman’s voice can wake
A tender thrill with the homely song
Of a nameless hero of Moosehead Lake.
UP IN MAINE A hero in leggings, he volunteered
—When the treacherous ice lay black as loam
In the melting spring—to risk his life
And bring to others the news from home.
He bore the mail for the lumber camp,
The missives for many an anxious man
Who toiled for the ones he loved so well,
In the wilds of the far Socatean. ”

“ On the chaps going by without ribbon or horn.
And the trotters and nags of the blood-royal
strain
Are a-furnishing fun for the people of Maine;
While prouder than princes they prance to the
band,
And ogle the ladies arrayed on the stand. ”

“ Can’t prance to the rail and get his drink,
But it’s five and costs if ye mar the paint,
And ten if the feller that makes complaint
Gets mad at a playful push in the eyes
And goes into court with a lot of lies.
It’s ten if ye sliver a steam-bo’t’s deck
—There ain’t no argue—it’s right in the neck.
And they soak you, too, on the railroad train;
—Why, there’s hardly a loggin’ crew in Maine
But what has claimed, as a nat’ral right,
A chance to holler and heller and fight,
And knock the stuffin’ out of the seats,
Rip off the blinds and club with the cleats. ”

“ A dumb but an eloquent voucher of a thoughtful
and true mother-heart.
And, neighbors, from things I have noted, I
think it’s a pretty good rule
To size up a mother’s devotion by the grub her
child carries to school.
Those savors that float from my childhood dull
all the delights of my board;
The good things from mother’s old kitchen my
dollars can never afford,
And I’d trade all these delicate dishes—a clean
unconditional sale—
For the tang of the infinite gusto from the depths
of that old dinner pail. ”

“ I look ’crost the table to mother, and marm she
looks over at me,
And passes another hot biskit and says, “Won’t
ye have some more tea?”
And while I am stirrin’ the sugar, I relish the
sound of the storm.
For, thank the good Lord, we are cosy and the
stock in the tie-up is warm.
I tell ye, the song o’ the fire and the chirruping
hiss o’ the tea,
The roar of the wind in the chimbly, they sound
dreadful cheerful to me.
But they’d harrer me, plague me, and fret me,
unless as I set here I knew
That the critters are munchin’ their fodder and
bedded and comf’table too. ”

“ I’m a hen.”
Now with all these due precautions we are ready
for the gang,
We’ll endure the harmless tumult of the rifles’
crack and bang,
For we’re glad to have you with us—shoot the
landscape full of holes;
We will back our brand-new armor for to save
our precious souls.
O you feller in the city, those ’ere woods is full
of fun,
We’ve got on our iron trousers—so come up
and bring your gun! ”

“ For the average city feller he has big game on
the brain,
And imagines in October there is nothing else in
Maine!
Therefore some absorbed old farmer cutting corn
or pulling beans
Gets most mightily astonished with a bullet in
his jeans.
So, O neighbor, scoot for cover or get out your
armor plate,
—Johnnie’s got his little rifle and is swooping
on the State.
Oh, we’re learning, yes, we’re learning, and I’ll
warn you now, my son,
If you really mean to bore us you must bring a
bigger gun. ”

“ Drink a good, round jorum to the stout ash staff.
When the girls have filched your cash,
There is still the hearty ash,
It is waiting at Seboomook for to cheer your
foolish soul.
Ah, you know we love it most; and I give
you this, my toast,
The river driver’s darling, oh, his long ash pole.
We’ve ridden the gorges on rioting logs, and
we’ve always swept safe to the land. ”

“ Float up where the old man stands and leans
His trembling hands on the worn old snath,
As he looks afar in the broadening path,
Where the shivering grasses melt beneath
A seven-foot bar and its chattering teeth.
When a man gits old, says he,
When a man gits old,
He is mighty small pettaters
As I’ve just been told.
I used to mow at the head of the crew,
And I cut a swath that was wide as two.
—Covered a yard, sah, at every sweep;
The man that follered me had to leap.
I made the best of the critters squeal,
And nary a feller could nick my heel. ”

“ They have terrified the nations, and have laid
the bravest low,
But intimidate a woodsman up in Maine? Why,
bless you, no!
Merely misty apparitions or some sad ancestral
spook
Serve to terrify a maiden or to warn a death-
marked duke.
But the P. I. scoffs their terrors, though he’ll
never venture loose
’Mongst the ha’nts that roam the woodlands in
the weird domains of Spruce. ”

“ Of the rasping buck-saw’s dancing spring,
For the rugged rhythm is fashioned for
The ear that remembers ur-r rick, ur-r raw.
Ur-r raw, ur-r rick.
Ur-r raw, ur-r rick!
We pecked at our mountain stick by stick.
Our dad was a man who was mighty good
In getting the women-folks lots of wood.
And as soon as sledding came on to stay
Jack got all work and he got no play.
For daily the ox-sleds creaked and crawked
Till the yard was full and the buck-saws talked.
’Twas rugged toil and we humped our backs,
But we scarce kept pace with dad’s big axe. ”

“ There’s the S. of T. and the K. of P.
And the League of the Order of Liberty;
Masons and Odd Fellows string along,
Thicker than flies in the moving throng.
Till it seems that every fellow could
Give you a sign of a brotherhood.
Oh, I like to meet them, every one,
From the Daughter of Peace to a Son of a Gun.
But I can’t quite feel the same delight
As I used to when, some summer night,
I’d take a few of the high degrees
In the O. K. K. B. W. P’s.
We had no lodge-room with locks and bars
—Our hall was the dome ’neath the winking
stars ”

“ But ’twas all right! I’m
not the sort to curse and whine,
My joy has been that she was yours, so long as
she could not be mine.
—My joy, old friend, is now to say, as here we
clasp this worn old post,
There is no heart-burn in my past, no shimmer of
a jealous ghost.
For boyhood’s lesson taught me this: ’Tis only
some egregious fool
Who rails at Fate and storms the skies because
some better man “tags gool.”
I’ve been content to stand there, friend, while
one by one the eager troop
Of boyhood’s chums have won their goal in Life’s
more earnest hide-and-coop. ”

“ And this is the song of the saw.
DOWN THE TRAIL WITH GUM PACKS Ev’ry nugget clean and sound,
Red’s a jewel, smooth and round,
Worth a dollar’n ten a pound;
Here’s your gum, ye giddy girls,
Here’s your Maine spruce gum.
The chaps that went off with the Klondike
diggers
For gold—jest gold,
Have slumped in the snow, and they work like
niggers,
And they haven’t got rich, we’re told. ”

“ Chance goes swinging by,
Who gets his dab in the juiciest place and the
biggest plum in the pie;
There’s always a chance to milk the world—
there’s a teat, a pail, and a stool;
There’s a place for the chap with sense and grip,
but a dangerous holt for a fool.
For while the feller that’s up to snuff drums a
merry tune in his pail,
The fool sneaks up on the left-hand side and
lands in the grave or in jail.
—It’s an awkard place, as you’ll allow,
The off-hand side of the world or a cow.
THE LYRIC OF THE BUCK-SAW Ur-r rick, ur-r raw,
Ur-r rick, ur-r raw! ”

“ And that the stuff a-runnin’ down and gobbed
acrost his face
Was quarts of gore, and so old Pease had clean
give up his case.
And there he stood like some old hen a-drippin’
in the rain,
And hollered stiddy, ‘Blood and brain, I’m
dead; oh, blood and brain!’
Old Uncle Clark was on his back, a-listening to
the fuss,
And wonderin’ whuther that old gun had
murdered him or us.
“Now that’s the way the thing come off. Best
is,” concluded Bart,
“They warn’t nobody hurt a mite: three-fifty
fixed the cart.” ”

“ He’s smaller pettaters when he grows old.
I’VE GOT THEM CALVES TO VEAL It’s a jolly sort of season, is the spring—is the
spring,
And there isn’t any reason for not feeling like a
king.
The sun has got flirtatious and he kisses Mis-
tress Maine,
And she pouts her lips, a-saying, “Mister, can’t
you come again?” ”

“ It’s wonderful, friend, how it tickles and calms,
—That whiff from those simmering pickles of
marm’s.
“THE MAN I KNEW I KILLED” Ezra Saunders, of Hopkins’ Creek,
Was the next old soldier asked to speak.
He’d seen his share of the thousands slain
In the active days of the Umteenth Maine;
And we settled hack to hear him tell
His reasons for thinking that “War is Hell.” ”

“ And marm, she slats open the oven, and pulls
out a heapin’ full tin
Of the rippin’est cream-tartar biskit a man ever
pushed at his chin.
We pile some more wood on the fire, and open
the damper full blare,
And pull up and pitch into supper—and com-
fort—and taste good—wal, there!
And the wind swooshes over the chimbly, and
scrapes at the shingles cross grain,
But good double winders and bankin’ are mighty
good friends here in Maine. ”

“ You pay for the damage, and ten plunks more.
’Tain’t much like the days when we had some
rights,
When we roosters sharpened our spurs in fights,
When never a crowd put up galoots
That could scrap with the fellers with spike-sole
boots.
It’s a case of step to the wangan camp, and buy
some partent leathers;
And go a-snoopin’ along to town like a dude on
his weddin’-trip;
And the only thing you can do to a guy is to tickle
his nose with feathers,
And curl in your seats in the smokin’-car when
a drummer gives you lip. ”